Components of a virtualized computing platform, such as a cloud-computing environment, may run on software-defined network (SDN) that is overlaid on top of a physical “bare-metal” network. This approach gives network managers great flexibility in configuring virtual network topologies without needing to manipulate an underlying physical infrastructure.
Methods of testing performance of an underlying physical network, such as measuring available network bandwidth by passing data between two physical nodes, have long been known in the art. But using such methods to measure performance of a software-defined network is more difficult. A bare-metal testing mechanism designed to measure network bandwidth between two physical points may not be able to automatically locate, identify, and measure available bandwidth between virtualized end-points of a software-defined network.
Even greater obstacles impede efforts to compare relative performances of a “bare-metal” physical network segment and a software-defined network overlaid on top of the same bare-metal network segment. Bare-metal performance must be measured by a physical-network management console capable of accessing and testing lower levels of a network-protocol stack, such as the physical, media-access control, data link, network, or transport layers. But testing a software-defined network may require a second, distinct, virtualized test tool that has direct access to virtual infrastructure overlaid on top of lower-layer infrastructures. It is therefore difficult to ensure meaningful comparisons between physical and virtual network performances by attempting to synchronize physical and virtual testing mechanisms running on different platforms under the control of different network-management tools.
There is thus no simple, straightforward method of determining whether a software-defined network is making efficient use of its underlying bare-metal network platform. And, even if such a method did exist, it has not been automated so as to provide auto-triggering, real-time or near real-time analysis of an efficiency of a software-defined network as a function of a performance of that SDN's underlying physical infrastructure.